But I always try to avoid passing comment on the actual formats themselves – CD versus vinyl, analogue versus digital – because I feel these discussions are actually red herrings. They’re distractions from the real issues of what makes our music sound great.

But inevitably in the comments of these posts and videos, someone will eventually jump in with the timeless old chestnut:

‘Digital can never sound as good as analogue’

Now this is a popular belief these days, but the fact is there’s no theoretical reason to believe it’s true – correctly implemented digital audio can exactly reproduce any analogue audio signal with complete accuracy.

But when I say that, there’s always someone who says something like

“people who listen to CD are missing out on the emotional experience. I don’t expect you to understand, but I know it’s true”.

To which my response is – how dare you ?!

I’ve spent my whole career in pursuit of great sound, in order to record great music. Being a sound engineer is all about trying to capture the emotion and feel of the original performance !

So don’t try and imply that I somehow don’t “get it” – I grew up with vinyl, I know all about the feel of taking a record out of the sleeve, dropping the needle into the groove, that physical connection…

But none of those factors influence the actual sound that comes out of the speakers – only the way we feel when we’re using the format. Yes, it’s a factor in the whole experience, but it has nothing to do with the actual recording of the music.

Recorded sound is not sound

Recorded music is often nothing like the original sound in the room. I know, I record it ! I’ve heard the musicians playing in the studio or venue, I go to live, 100% acoustic events several times a year. Not as often as I like, but regularly. I also have plenty of friends who are musicians and I get to hear them play, my kids make music… I get it, I love real live music, and I’ve said so, often.

But that’s not what recorded music is. Microphones are not ears, the electrical signals they induce to run down cables are not sound waves, speakers are nothing like the physical objects that made the original sound. It’s all just an illusion, our best attempt to recreate what we experience when the thing making a noise is right in front of us, by somehow storing the pressure variations in the air around us. The truth is, it’s a minor miracle that it works at all !

At the end of the day, the signal that gets stored on the format we’re using (tape, vinyl, CD, mp3, whatever) is only a recording of the movement of electrical current in a metal wire. That’s all it is, after all the mics and pre-amps and mixers and compressors and EQs and delays and tapes and converters and clocks and bit-depths and samples rates – it’s just a recording of the changes in electrical currents in a wire. Well, several bits of wire, anyway.

And the accuracy of that reproduction is easy to quantify – an electrical wave in a wire isn’t magic, it’s the one the best-understood physical effects in the world around us. The “best” recreation of the original master is the one that reproduces that original signal most accurately – what the original artists and engineers originally intended us to hear. And great digital and great analogue are both capable of storing this signal well enough to reproduce it with superb accuracy – and emotional impact.

Immediately Obvious

The clearest demonstration of this in my career so far was working on the remastering of a box set of singles from Andrew Loog Oldhams’s Immediate record label – including classic tracks like PP Arnold’s “First Cut Is The Deepest”, Rod Stewart’s “Little Miss Understood” and many less well-known tracks by acts like the Small Faces, Fleetwood Mac and The Nice.

The great thing about this project was that as well as earlier CD releases and as many original master tapes as could be found, we also had a complete mint condition collection of the original releases on 45″ singles.

This was fantastic, because we were able to compare all the available sources of every single song, including how the actual original release sounded, and use that information as part of the mastering process. What was surprising, was discovering which formats sounded best.

You might think the original master tapes would win every time. They didn’t.

You might think the actual original vinyl would always sound the best – it didn’t.

And you might assume that the original early CD transfers would always sound cold, hard and clinical – but they didn’t. Not by a long shot. Sometimes the analogue reels did !

There was no pattern.

For some songs, the original master tapes sounded incredible. For others, the vinyl just had a certain quality in the sound that the others didn’t. And for some tracks, the earlier CD releases actually sounded best.

(And by best, I mean you connected with the music the most, felt the need to dance more, felt the emotion of the lyrics more clearly…)

Sometimes we could apply processing to match different versions much more closely – sometimes not. But in every case, it was to do with the mastering decisions and quality of the transfer that determined what sounded best – NOT the type of format.

The single most amazing discovery we made had nothing to do with the sound at all ! It was to do with the music. It turned out that the version of “First Cut Is The Deepest” that was on every single CD release we could find… was the wrong take.

The vocal take on the original vinyl was softer, sweeter, lighter and sadder than the one we already knew, and it wasn’t on on any modern release we had access to. We’d never heard this version, and the vinyl was the only copy we had – so that’s what went into the box set. Prior to that release, no-one was hearing the very best (and original) version of that song.

The music is the most important thing.

So what IS so special about analogue and vinyl, then ?

All the other “flavours” of analogue tape or vinyl or tubes that we like, are just a matter of taste, in my opinion. If we grew up with record crackle and end-of-side distortion, there’s a good chance we’ll associate that quality of sound with some of our most intense musical experiences.

If the first time you heard The Beatles, or Pink Floyd, or Elvis, or Nirvana was connected in your brain with the physical act of dropping a needle onto record, then pressing “play” on a CD player or computer screen is unlikely to ever match it. Just like I love watching the amazing engineering of an old Studer tape machine as it switches from rewind to play, or the feel of resistance as you thread a tape across the heads.

But these are “added value” factors in our listening experience – they don’t affect the sound waves in the room. Those are determined by the movements of the speaker cones, which are made to move by the amplified signal of… the changes in electrical current in a wire.

If we get pleasurable endorphins released into our bloodstream because of the pleasant smell of old record sleeves, or seeing the large format artwork and reading the lyrics, that will change our experience of the sound – but not the sound itself.

It’s a kind of magic

If you prefer listening on vinyl despite the technical limitations of hiss, rumble, clicks and distortion that makes perfect sense to me – all power to you. Personally I love listening to music out of doors, combined with the experience of physical activity and connecting with the natural world, so an iPod is an ideal format for me to listen on – despite the technical limitations of lossy encoding, cheap consumer electronics and lightweight earbuds.

None of these things have anything to do with the sound quality of the format. They’re fascinating and there’s no doubt they affect our listening experience, but they aren’t magic.

All music reproduction is a kind of magic, to me – but the magic is in the music, not the format it’s reproduced from.Image by jDevaun

I still but records, and not the new stuff which to me is nothing more than a CD pressed to wax. When CD’s first came out I remember thinking one word – brittle.
There’s nothing like dropping that needle and hearing that bit of crackle, or sticking your nose into the record jacket, taking and whiff and smelling 1976. Get to the root and not the fruit. Oh, and I still kept all my cassettes – all 600.

I am Charles Widmer. In Switzerland we discussed and compared about PCM digital audio since 1983 when here the first CD players come out.

unfortunately you are right, Analogue Audio seems to be a matter of taste. Yes, it is but this is wrong because there ARE big differences between a clean, well done LP production an a CD (PCM, 44.1kHz Production)

why “unfortunately”? – Because the important aspects are only the psychical and physical abilities of the human audio perception. Too few people have knowledge in this topic.

Under this aspect it is never a queston of “analogue” or “digital”. There ar laser-sharp arguments for or against each of the systems, regarding the human perception parameters.

…like very much your ideas and your “perception” is a brilliant tool. One day, I will buy it for sure 😉

I think you’ve touched on an issue that has multiple dimensions. Much can be said about the quality of the work done to get things onto CDs. Many early CDs were excessively tizzy (before dithering in particular) and that left a bad taste in many folks mouths. I have CDs made for audiophiles (mostly by hand) that sound better than the comparable LPs. But this is the result of work that is less often done in fast, cheap CD pressing facilities. At the same time I own “dynagroove” records that sound like absolute garbage (an innovation that wasn’t). Historic LPs tended to have been recorded with lots of tube equipment, with extreme interest in accurate phase relationships (badness happens on LPS with bad phase). The very best LPs on the very best turntables (no rumble, no groove noise, no crackling) do sound enveloping (and yes I have such a setup). But the gap between the average LP and a well made CD is non-existent. The important words there are, however, well made. There is, in my opinion, no single factor that determines sonically “better.” Every step in the chain is important [ok, most important is STILL the actual musicianship :)].

Despite being a vinyl fan, I have to agree with pretty well everything Ian said here. For those of us who were teenagers before CDs were introduced, the whole experience of buying and listening to records was a key part of growing up and influenced our views on what music should ‘sound like’, even if that was in reality just a reflection of what was possible with the technology of the time )and ewhat was fashionable).

But I have also had a lot of pleasure listening to music that I’ve only ever heard on CD or download and haven’t sat there thinking ‘if only I could get this on vinyl’. There are good and bad digital recordings, just as there are good and bad LPs and I don’t believe that the formats inherently dictate anything.

Poor quality digital generally sounds nastier than poor quality analogue because it degrades less gracefully and generates artefacts that don’t occur in the natural world (which is where the human auditory system evolved), but good digital can be very good indeed, as can good analogue.

Think of a great song. Think of when and how you heard it and what you felt at that moment that made you like it. Maybe it was on vinyl, maybe it was on CD, or perhaps you’ve heard it on radio or in a movie? Producing and recording music has become very independent on mediums long time ago, since more mediums grew to become relevant in transferring emotions from authors to listeners. Waves in wires… lasers and discs, software decoding… it’s like saying a book is better to read in English than in Korean… and what if you are Korean? Some of my favorite books I red translated, and though they were different in language, the emotions and mental pictures translated so well that I understood and loved the books! In music we translate our feelings from the very making of it through playing, recording, mixing and reproduction. After so much mediums taking part in all that, the last one (actual storage) became the one with least impact other than maybe a colorful (or sometimes not 🙂 package… “Don’t judge a book by it’s covers” we say 😉

I agree with the above. There are two things that can really hamper a vinyl performance (for me). These are the “quiet end” of the dynamic range and the horrid Inner Groove Distortion which can appear when “pushing it” near the end of a side. It really is pot luck on the quality of pressing too – that can really get in the way of the music. In short, the mechanical set-up used to play records is susceptible to so many elements that can degrade the perceived performance. Technically (on paper) the vinyl system gets blown out of the water by CDs.

That’s all the negatives that I’ll point out though. I come to this from the perspective that it’s fantastic that vinyl can sound as good as it does! – it’s really a minor physical miracle. Moving coil cartridges, because the cantilever mechanism is more articulated and has less moving mass, can theoretically respond to frequencies above the sampling frequency for CDs (44.1 kHz)! This also makes them good trackers.

There is something that definitely resonates with me, when listening to some music on vinyl. I have CD and vinyl copies of a few albums, but I occasionally find myself listening to the vinyl version in preference. I’m even making a short-list out for my next record deck (probably Rega, because I like to buy British if possible). My poor old Dual CS505-3 (okay, okay, I know that’s not British) is starting to show signs of its age!

CDs do have limitations, digitally speaking. They can never be as good as a studio master, as they’re restricted to 16 bits, 256 times less resolution than professional 24 bit gear!

Thanks for your comments – I disagree with your final statement though – CD’s only limitations are in frequency response and noise floor. Maybe a 48 kHz sample rate would get better results, but that’s about it. It’s not an issue of resolution, though – see here:

I’m 30-something, and I grew up listening to Cassette Tapes, and when first got to hear the Compact Disk format, I was awe-struck by the richness and the cleanness of the sound. Heard vinyl a few times later in life, but the sound is way inferior that of CD to my taste. But, that’s the way I experience music, many may disagree with my statements, and that’s OK.

@Ian, well played. A thoughtful and insightful post that neatly sums up the conundrum.
Of course you’ll never stop people having their preferences but if even just a few of the louder voices stop and take stock of their own opinions and how they reached them, the you’ve hit the target. Me included of course.

I really don’t mean to take you to task on anything but you only really touched on the archival side of things… sound quality is one thing and archiving another so forgive me if you feel this isn’t within the remit of your post.

I was very intrigued to read the story of the Immediate box set you worked on. Wow {jealous} What a luxury – all those different masters!
In similar work that I’ve undertaken, I’ve occasionally had the chance to compare tape transfers from the original tape masters with original pressings on vinyl. It has been quite instructive. There is, as you say, no easy prediction. Sometimes the tape wins hands down, sometimes very much not… I had a project returned last month, made from tape masters, due to it sounding ‘shti’ (it did) and it turned out a subsequent rip from a vinyl LP which we only referred to originally for the running order, knocked spots off the official 24 bit tape master transfer. This happens a lot.
Like you, I’ve also discovered that the wrong take is on current editions and I’m able to get a better original version from a vinyl issue from the day. That’s happened at least three times (albeit on very obscure material). I guess the archiving of the original material was flawed but it sure is fun to say ‘hey check THIS out’.

If there IS any kind of pattern I’d say I am getting more consistent good results from pristine original pressings on vinyl than I am from tape masters… not always, and I’m at the mercy of the transferrers of tapes, as I only do my own vinyl rips. I have more than a feeling that many original tapes world-wide have degraded or are starting to degrade to a point where vinyl is an obvious improvement as the archival source material. Vinyl is a real lifesaver for some projects. I got a missing 6 minutes from a well known Fela Kuti track by using the only known sources: European tape master (good) with 6 mins missing, and original Nigerian LP (knackered) with the missing segment still in it. Somehow, I made it blend 🙂
If it’s untouched, vinyl will in theory sound exactly the same as when it was made, like 50 years ago. Not so the tapes which have had to contend with material changes such as magnetic decay, magnetic damage, chemical attack, stretching, oxide loss, poor physical storage and in the case of the infamous Ampex 456 Grand Masters, hydrophilia… I think that’s what it’s called! I feel this catalogue of issues will come into play more and more. And as for DAT tapes, well… dead is dead.

Purely from an archival point of view, I have an enduring preference for vinyl. It has the ability to maintain fidelity across large areas of time and taste. It usually has the musical ‘feel’ of the age it was made since it comes complete with all the mastering knowledge of the day.
It makes my job easier.

To add just a little more on the digital vs analogue debate, sticking with the archival issue… doesn’t it annoy the hell out of you that most flashy digital audio ‘products’ tend to come with little or no digital verification as standard, thus contributing to a general decay in digital music’s authenticity? Isn’t the prevailing thinking that digital is lossless when done correctly, but in practise it is not normally done correctly? Just a few days ago I was given a few vinyl 45s and some CD rips with which to make a 50’s 2 LP R+B compilation. I was annoyed to discover that on one of the CDs, the track I wanted had digital glitches, such as you get on a fading CD-r, but this was from a silver factory made disc. Closer inspection revealed there to be nothing wrong with the disc I was ripping, it had been made from a previous poor digital rip and contained permanent damage as a result. Ask yourself how often this must occur? And the sad fact is my most accurate ripping technology doesn’t reveal any errors. It still takes my ears to hear it. Scary, eh?
Ironically, material that was made from DAT sources oit early CD-r’s is equally at risk of sudden death, unless it was pressed to vinyl 🙂
Stick to vinyl I say… 😛 No, I’m kidding of course but digital data storage needs to come with a lot more built-in verification and the ethos needs a sense of good old fashioned archival thoroughness before it will truly win me over.

Oh, one more thing.. about the often repeated statement that digital has a very much higher dynamic range than vinyl.
True. However… is it not also true to say that musical information of the sort that we actually hear and enjoy exists mostly in a much narrower range of amplitude and so therefore the total dynamic range is not such an issue? In my opinion it’s more important to accurately track the changes in amplitude within the material, not the total scale of amplitude. In which case most if not all musical material falls very much within the scope of vinyls ‘limitations’. Just for argument’s sake…

Absolutely love your post. Made me think a lot and I have already passed it on to several people who need to see it. Apologies for rambling on as I always do…

Hi Ian
Thanks for all the great advice I’ve garnered from your posts.
I must admit that I once subscribed to the vinyl is better idea. However, in my defense, my impressions were the result of the differences in the quality of my components (I don’t want to admit how much my turntable cost 30+ years ago – Let’s just say my cartridge cost more than my first CD player.) The consumer DACs from that era were pretty bad. Unfortunately, many of today’s consumer players still have crappy DACs. Additionally,, many of the CDs were mastered too hot – and they distorted (at least on the consumer player). I now have excellent converters – so digital sounds great. Unfortunately, many of the modern CDs don’t.
Cheers

Interesting article. At the end if the day it ends up personal preference. I own many of Marc Bolan’s multi-track 2″ tapes and they do still sound amazing as they were recorded so well. However, I guess we must embrace new technology without dismissing the brilliance of analogue.